What’s a Girl Gotta Do to Get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

By: Alexandra Apolloni (UCLA Center for the Study of Women, Los Angeles, CA) // Each year, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (henceforth Rock Hall) announces a new list of inductees: artists that are deemed worthy of commemoration—and canonization—as rock greats. And in 2016, none of the inductees were women. The underrepresentation of women …

The Popular Songwriter

By: Travis D. Stimeling (West Virginia University) // In November 1975, Barry Manilow hit the top of the Billboard “Top 40” chart with “I Write the Songs.” Singing from the perspective of Music itself, the song’s protagonist “write[s] the songs that make the whole world sing.” Although that line has made headline writers happy for the past four …

Song of Myself: Autobiography in Pop Music

By: Kendra Leonard (Loveland, OH) // Many artists draw on personal experience when they create art, and music is no different. Like Tennessee Williams’s plays, Hemingway’s stories, or Van Gogh’s self-portraits, composers and songwriters often include elements of autobiography in their works. Female composers have had to make their way in what was traditionally a …